Our History
Bailey, the founder of The Hands and Feet, is a former foster mom and now adoptive mom to four beautiful children. After closing her home to fostering after 5 years and taking in 23 children she realized there was a huge gap in resources for foster and kinship families. On a whim one evening she decided she would offer a delivery service of material items to a friend who was taking in 3 children in the middle of the night.
At 12:30 AM, Bailey and her sister Makayla, ran to CVS and gathered anything they could find for the 17 year old girl, her 1 year old son, and her 14 year old sister who had been human trafficked from another country and left abandoned in a parking lot, only to be found and placed in the foster care system. After driving to the foster family's home at 1:00 AM and delivering essentials that could not be found anywhere else at that time of night she realized she was onto something.
For the next 3 days after that life altering moment she watched as she requested more items for these three children and item upon item continued to show up on this family's doorstep. From coloring books in the girls' native language, to clothing and baby gear for the little boy, to even specific food items that helped bring a sense of comfort to a terrifying situation, the community completely surrounded this family and these three children and forever impacted their life.
This is where The Hands and Feet truly began and has only grown from there. While they only started out serving Palm Beach County, Kristin West felt this deep desire to get involved more in the child welfare system. Being a foster parent herself she knew the immense stress that receiving a new child into your home brings. She saw the grassroots efforts that were already impacting Palm Beach County and knew she needed to open this in her area. Within a few weeks she had launched the Treasure Coast branch and already began changing lives in her local community.
After much impact had been made over the course of 6 months to Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast the Broward County branch was launched in January of 2022. Diana Gelfand who is a foster and adoptive mother of 3 and her dear friend, Katy Wood, who has supported the foster care system and families for years joined forces to lead the Broward branch together.